Revenge14 min read
A Matchbox and a Bottle of YSL
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I was supposed to stay small and useful. I was supposed to be grateful. I was supposed to be invisible.
"Jillian, come here."
When I opened the apartment door, his voice filled the foyer like a command.
Adriano Dawson sat on the leather sofa in the living room. A woman with waved hair and red lipstick curled into him. Her name was Dior Petersen; she smiled like someone who never feared consequence.
He had his right arm around her waist. They were close, breath close enough to share.
I lowered my eyes and walked to him without a sound.
"Call her Aunt," he said flatly.
Those three words landed in my chest like a blade.
I didn't speak.
The woman laughed a little to cover the silence. "Oh, don't be shy. Jillian might be embarrassed. It's okay."
They resumed their softness. Adriano walked Dior to the door.
I changed into pajamas and went to the bathroom. I was brushing my teeth when a pair of hands slid around my waist from behind.
My hand froze.
The mirror reflected Adriano's face above my shoulder.
"Uncle," I said, the word dry and automatic.
He tightened his hold.
His body carried another woman's scent. Black Opium. A deep, loud perfume that declared conquest.
"Why didn't you speak before?" he whispered near my ear.
I turned the faucet, keeping my eyes on his in the mirror.
"Are you really getting married?" I asked.
He answered with the practiced calm of a man who balanced benefits like accounts.
"Her father is our biggest partner. Marrying her is a win for the company."
He meant it literally. He only did what paid him.
I pried his fingers apart slowly. He hadn't expected that.
"Adriano," I said, voice small. "Stop."
2
The first time I saw him, I was fifteen, at my father's funeral.
He had been a friend of my father's. He wore black like the rest of the men, but his movements were careful, and when he wiped a tear from my face, it was the gentlest thing I had known.
"Who are you?" I managed.
"I'm Adriano Dawson," he said. "I'm a friend of your father."
After that, he took me in.
He was generous—too generous. He bought me everything except the one thing my heart dared to ask for: his heart.
In high school, when girls secretly wore lipstick, I used the allowance he gave me and bought one. He found me with it on.
"Stand still," he said.
He tore a napkin, dampened one half, and came closer. The cool paper touched my lips. He scrubbed my mouth until no color remained.
"Don't wear lipstick," he said. "Be a clean girl."
That sentence settled in me like a seal.
He liked showy women. He liked women who caused a stir in smoke and heels. He wanted them for spectacle. For some reason, he wanted me as the clean thing he could control.
3
On my eighteenth birthday, after college entrance exams, I finally broke his rules.
I went to a club. I danced. I ignored his calls.
When I returned home late, the living room smelled of smoke and the small lit ember of a cigarette was the only light.
"You're back?" he asked.
I stood by the shoe cabinet, exhausted.
He stepped closer. "Jillian," he said, and his voice had the thrum of judgment.
He pushed me into a corner, his hand at my throat tightening.
"Uncle, it hurts," I choked.
He let go. "People who go to clubs are—"
"Only those who sell themselves," he finished for me.
He pulled away and said, "Go shower. You're filthy."
I slapped him with the single brave thing I could: I crossed to his chest and asked, "Will you buy me if I sell?"
Before he could respond, I kissed him.
My lips touched his—cool from smoke. He pinned my shoulders. He called me mad and angry and then, when the walls closed in, he finally lost control the way I had wanted him to. He used me. I used him. After that night, the world ended and began again.
4
In college I met Hudson Camp.
"Hey handsome, haven't chased the boss's wife yet?" one of my part-timers teased when he came into my shop.
"Quiet," I said and kept checking prices.
Hudson was simple. He sat in my shop often, ordered tiramisu and stayed until closing. He didn't know how to charm, but he practiced with patience.
"Jillian," he said one afternoon, "I bought movie tickets. You free tonight?"
"No," I said.
He smiled and tried next time.
On the evening a news alert lit my phone—Adriano was engaged. The image showed him in a sharp black suit, arm linked with Dior.
My phone fell.
Lexi Fields in the back blinked and asked if I was all right. I couldn't answer, even when Hudson looked up with concern. I handed him a tiramisu to steady my hands and then, against my body, I felt something fragile break.
5
Hudson kept coming back.
"Watch this," he said one evening, buying two last-row tickets for a film he thought I'd like.
We sat in that back row and he watched me more than the screen.
"Are you okay?" he whispered during the closing credits when I finally cried.
"Yes," I lied.
He took me to late-night hot pot afterward. My phone kept ringing—Adriano's name on it. I refused to answer. Then, in the restaurant doorway, Dior and Adriano appeared soaked by the rainstorm. She scolded me like a child and told Adriano he had been driving himself mad.
He walked toward our table. He looked at Hudson like he was nothing. He splashed the rain as if to mark territory.
"Come home," he told me when he put me in the back seat. "You ride here."
Hudson wanted to follow.
"Trust me," I mouthed. "I'll be fine."
He left soaked and blamed himself later for not doing more.
Adriano drove fast. He smelled of someone else's perfume. He took me home as if moving a trophy. He let me sleep and in the night came back to the living room. He whispered, "You smiled at him tonight."
He pressed against me. "I bought you tonight," he said low. "I will always have you."
6
There was a pattern: possessive gestures, public control, private violence.
He forbade me to wear makeup. He forbade me to have friends. He paid for everything but kept a ledger of my sins.
One morning I found contraception in my medicine cabinet. He picked it up, examined it, and threw it away.
"Don't take these," he said. "They are bad for you."
"Would you marry me if I were pregnant?" I asked, because I had to know.
He didn't say yes. He said: "I can raise the child. You don't have to be responsible for him."
He could provide everything but a place in his heart.
Hudson heard me when I told him everything.
"Jillian," he said softly one night on the phone, "do you want to meet? I want to talk."
"Yes," I told him.
7
I told him the truth.
"Adriano and I—" I started, voice shaking.
"You and who?" Hudson asked, concerned.
"Blood is complicated. He is...my uncle, in the sense my father entrusted me to his care."
Hudson made a small noise. "I like you, Jillian. I love you."
"I have a past," I said. "I did things. I let him use me. I asked for things I should not have asked for."
He listened. "It's messy," he said. "But I want you."
"I don't deserve you," I said.
"You do," he replied.
He wrapped his arms around me in a coffee shop and whispered, "Be mine."
I told him everything that night—the eighteen-year-old me, the smell of smoke, the words Adriano had used, the way he told me to be 'clean' while courting women like Dior.
"I'm not clean," I said.
"You never were," Hudson answered, "but you're whole."
8
We married quietly in a municipal office. He lifted me and spun me and laughed like he couldn't believe it was real.
"You're with me now," he said as if it was the greatest treasure.
I believed him.
But the past didn't fade; it shadowed the day after we signed papers. Adriano called. He summoned me home.
"You don't have to come," Hudson said. "I can come with you."
"No," I replied. "This is my fight."
I hid a small knife in my pocket because Adriano had been watching me for months. I had learned to watch back.
9
When I walked into his apartment that afternoon, the smell of smoke was heavier.
He did not stand. He watched me, smug.
"Come here," he said at last.
I didn't. I said, "I want to talk."
"Where's your ID? Why are your coordinates showing the registry? Who did you marry?"
He grabbed me and smashed an ashtray to the floor. Glass glittered at my feet. He pinned me.
I revealed the knife.
"If you will not let me leave, then I will make you let me," I said.
I moved forward and the blade nicked his forearm. Blood marks his sleeve.
He laughed, "You're trying to kill me?"
"I'm trying to be free," I answered.
He struck the doorframe with his fist and bruises formed at my face. He accused me of using him. I told him he'd used me.
Then he offered to have me get a divorce.
"Divorce who?" I asked.
"Divorce him," he said, "and marry me instead."
Perhaps for a moment I saw a version of him that wasn't cruel. Then I remembered the times he strangled me and belittled me and sold me to himself. I pushed him away and left with the knife still in my pocket. Ten minutes later, the elevator closed and his hand made a wordless apology against the glass: "Sorry."
10
I moved out. I left the shop to Lexi. I told Hudson to meet me at the bus.
We drove to a southern town with fog on the river and small wooden boats. Hudson said, "This is home."
One afternoon months later, I received a package with an initial on the label: "A." Inside was a bottle of YSL perfume.
I pressed my nose to it and inhaled, and the scent made me dizzy for a second. I knew Adriano had always complained about my not wearing makeup, my refusing to be polished. The perfume felt like a question and an answer at once.
"Is that him?" Hudson asked.
"Yes," I said. "But he's not me anymore."
I locked the perfume in the drawer and turned the key. Then I closed the drawer and tossed the key into the kitchen trash—literal and symbolic. The key sunk among the coffee grounds and the garbage.
"Let's cook," Hudson said, and the day smelled like garlic.
11
Months passed. We built a life with a slow kitchen and a faster heartbeat. I stopped flinching at loud male voices. I started to sleep without waking at Adriano's possible steps. I learned to plant herbs, to cut a bread, to let Hudson kiss me without looking for ulterior signs.
But Adriano would not let me go without drama. He came to the city three months after we married, claiming some business meeting at the hotel where Hudson's firm was hosting a charity gala.
He found me. He found Dior. He found an audience.
That night, I did something I had not planned. I did what I should have done eight years earlier—the thing I had never had the courage to do.
12
Public Punishment Scene (Adriano Dawson and Dior Petersen)
"Adriano," I said into the microphone the gala staff gave me without explanation, "you promised me the world for sale, and in return you took my voice."
The ballroom—an artfully lit center of the city's social season—fell from polite buzz into a sudden, stunned silence. The chandeliers reflected the shocked faces of sponsors, journalists, and Adriano's own board members.
"Who is she?" someone hissed. Camera shutters clicked like discreet artillery.
Adriano's face was a studied calm at first. "Who gave you that microphone?" he demanded.
"Does it look like they care?" I asked. The microphone was warm in my hand. I felt Hudson's fingers graze my wrist: support, not restraint. "Adriano, you are the man who taught me to be 'clean' while you collected women like obedient toys."
The cameras found him. He smiled superficially, a gambler's smile. "This is private," he said loudly. "She is—"
"All our private things have been publicized already," I interrupted, and I pressed play on the small tablet tucked in the inner pocket of my dress. It was a record of a voice memo made years ago—his voice, slow and predatory, describing to someone how easy it had been to keep me docile. Then came the text messages: requests for silence; a photo confirming his relations with Dior; invoices showing payments for luxury hotels. Each file placed another brick on the house of his lies.
The slide behind me lit: a dozen images, some with timestamps, showed Adriano standing in hotel doorways, in restaurants with Dior, with other women; some were receipts, some were voice notes, and one was a short clip where he boasted about tracking my phone.
"Who recorded these?" Adriano barked, the calm cracking.
"People you've used," I said. "A receptionist you once fired. A driver you thought was loyal. Dior, are you surprised anyone kept receipts?"
Dior's face blanched. Her practiced smile dissolved. The room's air had shifted from polite curiosity to raw interest. Whispering started—shock, then speculation, then the metallic gleam of knives disguised as concern.
Adriano moved towards me, confident then, as if he could still muscle the situation. "This is slander. Blackmail. Who gave you access to my files?"
"Your arrogance gave me access," I said. "You never believed the people you trampled had voices. They kept them."
"Stop this," Adriano said, louder now. His board members exchanged glances. A finance director tucked his chin, a woman in pearls covered her mouth.
One reporter, braver than the rest, stood. "Mr. Dawson, there are allegations of harassment and coercion. How do you respond?"
Adriano's mouth opened and closed. He tried to summon dominance, then tried apologies, then tried legal threats. Each reaction revealed him further: first fury, then denial, then a scramble for control.
"You're lying," he said at last, voice raw. "This is a conspiracy."
"No, it's not," I said. "It's proof."
At that, Adriano's reaction hardened into trembling disbelief. The evidence continued to play. An audio clip of his voice threatening surveillance, a message where he bragged about not marrying the women he used, and a set of images where Dior accepted a check in his presence.
Dior's eyes darted to the crowd. Social cameras found her—brand managers, PR people, the fashion editors who had once courted her for campaigns. Their expressions shifted from admiration to contempt. One editor reached for her phone. "Clients will want distance," he murmured. The women at the next table turned away, whispering rapidly. A young man near the stage took a photo and started to live-stream.
Adriano staggered. He raised his hand to his face and then lowered it, denial fighting panic. "You can't do this to me," he said. "I built a company. I have partners. You're ruining me."
One by one, the crowd vocalized what they had thought but not said. "How could he—" "Is that true?" "We need statements." The room, once a salon for polite lies, became a tribunal.
Adriano's eyes sought allies. He found them less forthcoming than usual. His chief partner, who had profited from Adriano's deals, looked away when his name appeared in a ledger on the screen. A senior board member quietly stood and said into a committee member's ear, "We need a meeting. Now."
Dior, who had been the mistress in high heels, collapsed into a chair. Her phone buzzed with messages. Her PR manager's face tightened. She had been an accessory until she wasn't; now she was the exposed accessory. An agency executive got up and walked out. "Not our face for the brand," he hissed. The fashion editors exchanged businesslike looks—sympathy was less important than survival.
Adriano was losing his footing. He tried to rally—"This is personal. This is vendetta"—but the words came thin and false. He began to appeal to sentiment, to profess his pain as if he were the injured party.
"Excuse me," Hudson said when Adriano started to grow desperate. He stepped forward, microphone in hand.
"He's been doing this for years," Hudson said with that low, steady tone that usually quieted bar noise. "He told me once, before we married, that he thought of people as investments. Jillian was the one he kept in a separate account."
Adriano turned on Hudson then, fury tangible. "Who are you to speak?"
"A man she married," Hudson answered simply. "A man who refuses to be bullied, by you or by anyone."
A young woman near the press table stood up, hand shaking. "I worked as Adriano's assistant," she said. "He asked me to delete emails. I didn't. He fired me for that. He told me I'd regret it. He was wrong."
Another voice rose. "I was his driver. I left because he threatened me." A former model, once flattered, now said, "He paid me, then shamed me later for wearing the clothes he bought."
The crowd became a courtroom.
Adriano's face went through the stages of collapse. He started with a flash of anger—"You're all lying"—then denial—"This is a set-up"—then the scramble of a man whose empire was numbers and names, crumbling into a man who needed people to believe his version.
"You're all liars," he shouted, suddenly pleading. "You want my money."
"Maybe some of us wanted truth," I said. "Not your money."
He began to cry. At first, the sound was a harsh, surprised sob, as if he had been hit. Then, deeper, he begged.
"Jillian, please," he said, falling to his knees in front of the stage. The chandeliers made him small. "I'll give everything. I'll make it right. Please, don't—"
The audience's reaction was a tide. Cameras panned. Someone yelled "Stop!" as if expecting to film the fraud and catch its end. Phones lifted. People recorded. Social media lit up in real-time.
A woman in a business suit whispered, "He'll lose sponsors. This will ruin his deals."
A child at a nearby table clapped quietly, bored by adult chaos. An old man shook his head like someone reading an inevitable tragedy.
Adriano's composure had been his mask; without it, he foundered. He tried to reach for Dior's hand; she pulled away. She was no longer a prize, but a witness.
"Get up," I told him. I was not cruel. I wanted accountability.
He made a choking sound. "I'm sorry," he whispered. His face was splotched with heat and the pale silver of shame. His posture folded inward.
Security escorted him from the room. Reporters fussed for statements. Someone muttered about lawsuits. Someone else called a phone number, "Legal counsel, now." Dior's publicist tried to salvage what remained, but publishers and advertisers were already texting an interest in distance.
Outside, where the valet parked the cars and the night fog smelled of rain, the doors to Adriano's life—boardrooms, society dinners, invitations—rounded an invisible corner. The cameras flashing like verdicts followed him.
He begged Hudson in the foyer, "Don't file charges. Don't take it public."
Hudson's voice was cold. "This is not for me," he said. "This is for her."
As the footage spread across the feeds, the comments were instant and merciless: "Predator," "Enough," "He got public." The public's reaction was a roaring consensus: he had abused his power and was now held to the light.
Dior's punishment was different. She was not dragged to the ground but she fell from the heights she had inhabited. Offers disappeared. Messages slowed. A few people who had once smiled at her turned away when her name surfaced in a headline. The difference between her and Adriano was that hers was reputational; his was foundational. She blinked, and the world that wanted her had moved on.
By the time the gala's chandeliers dimmed, Adriano had been stripped of the public poise he relied on. His board summoned an emergency meeting the next day. Sponsors demanded answers. The woman who had once whispered his accomplishments no longer smiled.
He had been powerful. Power can shelter a man until the day it does not.
When the doors finally closed behind him for the evening, he collapsed into a chair in the band's empty alcove and began to sob in shaking breaths.
I left with Hudson's hand in mine. Cameras followed and recorded that too: the calm man who put his arm around a woman who had gotten her voice back.
13
After the gala, the story ran across every platform.
Adriano's company faced inquiries. Dior's brand deals paused. The driver who had left got calls about potential witness statements. The assistant who had kept emails was rehired by a rival firm with an offer she never imagined.
"Did that feel like revenge?" Hudson asked later as we sat on our small porch, hands wrapped around mugs.
"It felt like light," I said. "Like windows opening."
I kept the YSL in the drawer for months. Once, during a storm, I opened it and wore it out to buy bread. It felt like a promise that I would not be caged again.
The perfume's trail followed those small steps until one evening when a postcard arrived.
The return mark was the only clue—"A." I slid the postcard from its envelope.
The handwriting was small. "You are free," it read. No signature beyond the single letter.
I put the postcard inside a book. Sometimes I took it out and folded it to my chest. Sometimes I burned it in a pan like a ritual. Once I put the matchbox I'd kept in a kitchen drawer and watched the flame lick a small, clean hole. Matches were good for a single spark, and they burned quick.
14
Later, I sold the shop in our old town to Lexi. I kept a small notebook with the receipts of the life I wanted. I kept Hudson's smile. We planted basil and thyme. We learned to live with ordinary love.
Once, in a rainy afternoon when Hudson was at work and I was alone, the key I'd thrown into the trash the day I moved out slipped from my mind. I had locked the perfume drawer without thinking. I had tossed the key and never retrieved it.
I like to think Adriano understood a little—what it means to be free.
On some nights I would smell the faintest trace of YSL on my collar and think of the man who taught me to be "clean" because he could not contain himself.
"Do you miss anything?" Hudson asked once while we were folding laundry.
"Sometimes," I said. "I miss the idea of being rescued wrong. I used to wait for him. Waiting is a habit."
Hudson's hand found mine. "You won't wait anymore," he said.
"No," I answered. "I won't."
15
We stayed small enough to be safe and big enough to be ourselves.
The postcard remained in my bookcase, between pages about planting rosemary. The perfume stayed in the drawer, the key in the trash. The matchbox I kept in my apron pocket sometimes, a tiny reminder that light can be struck fast and unexpected.
One afternoon, Hudson came home with tickets.
"Paris?" I said.
He smiled like he had fallen in love every morning for the last eight years. "No," he said. "Just a weekend in town. A small thing."
I laughed. Small things were now miracles.
That night, as we ate dinner by lamplight, the trash bin in the kitchen slowly collected crumbs and coffee grounds and a key that no longer opened anything important.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. The air smelled like garlic, laundry, and the faint ghost of a perfume I had once been taught to fear.
"Come," Hudson said. "Wash your hands. Dinner's waiting."
I stood, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't check the doorway for someone who would never come. I didn't clutch a matchbox like it was all I had.
I walked to the sink with both my hands free.
The End
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